Discrimination Against Hepatitis B Carriers in China

This, of course, could never happen in the US without certain consequence, but the mere fact that it's happening at all makes me angry. When I see ignorance about Hepatitis B in the US, I attribute it to the fact that Asians comprise of only 3% of the nation's population, East Asians even less. It makes sense for the US government to ignore it from a cost-benefit point-of-view. However, to think that 1 in 10 people are suffering discrimination for this disease in a country with 1.3 billion people, discrimination rooted in ignorance that could be easily eradicated, well, that just makes me sad, and a bit ashamed to be honest.

Most governments are probably counting on the idea that in a few generations, the vaccine will have done it's job of nearly vanquishing the virus from the population. The older, hepatitis B positive population will naturally have died off by then, creating for a perfect scenario that could very well be achieved by inaction.

Maybe that's what happens when you invent a vaccine. You forget about the people that are already laying in the sickbeds, still dreaming of promises for a cure. Who's going to tell them "Sorry, we've found a cure, but it's too late for you, I'm afraid."

Stopping the fight against this disease because we've invented a vaccine is a premature shout of victory, because everywhere around us, people are still fighting, people that we have left behind.

The sadder fact? Not everyone is sensitive to the standard vaccine. There is a significant portion of the population with innate insensitivity to the vaccine, meaning that they will not form antibodies to it. I, alone, know personally of two such people.